Subject: Velikovsky, neocatastrophism
From: ted holden
Date: 21/09/2004, 16:21
Newsgroups: alt.paranet.ufo


Insterested in reading up on Velikovskian catastrophism?  

Have I got a bargain for you!

On the products/books section of bearfabrique.org, i.e. at

http://www.bearfabrique.org/books/books.html

I have available, in .pdf/ebook format, a gigantic two-volume set of books
totalling over 1200 pages were you to print it dealing with the Velikovsky
controversy, for five dollars (USD) per volume.  The two volume set is
titled "Cosmology Wars"

These are two massive works which were published under different names about
eight years ago but which the authors and contributors simply
never had the wherewithal to attempt to market to large audiences at the
time, i.e. before the idea of selling pdf files and ebooks over the net had
occurred to anybody.

Volume I, over 400 pages, is Charles Ginenthal's dissection of Carl Sagan's
case(s) against Velikovsky's various theories starting from around 1974 and
the infamous AAAS symposium dealing with Velikovsky and his theories.

Volume II, just over 800 pages, is a collection of articles and essays
written by Ginenthal, Irving Wolfe, David Talbott, Ev Cochrane, Lynn Rose,
Dwardu Cardona, and with an addendum by myself (Ted Holden).

Wolfe Notes (first article in Volume II) that:

"The Velikovsky Affair is one of the blackest episodes in the history of
science.  That it could have happened at all is disturbing, but that it
happened in the 20th century, the age of science, and in America, the
embodiment of modern science, indicates that at the heart of our culture
lies a powerful panic-stricken irrationality which is not scientific 
but horrific. We think we live in an age of reason, but the ugly, demented
events of the Velikovsky Affair scream out that beneath the very shallow
surface of our alleged reasonableness there is a deep foundation of terror
which makes us respond hysterically and with uncontrollable rage to any
intimation that our world is not safe. That is the lesson the Velikovsky
Affair teaches us. It is not the story of one man, or of one moment, or of
one group. It is an insight into the dark, buried, instinctual region of
fear that underlies the whole of Western culture.

"Before we begin to look at the details of the Affair, its intellectual and
historical backgrounds must be clearly established. We are dealing, of
course, with the Immanuel Velikovsky story, which the unfamiliar reader
will grasp more easily if it is seen as falling into four separate areas:

1. Velikovsky's highly revolutionary, catastrophic theories,
2. the Velikovsky Affair, which is the sordid and vicious response to those
ideas by mainstream, American science, 
3. the impressive amount of evidence, especially from the space probes,
which has accumulated in mainstream science since 1950 in support of
Velikovsky's theories and predictions, and
4. catastrophist science, or research by Velikovsky's supporters in a number
of fields, published in hundreds of scholarly articles, which constitutes a
parallel universe to mainstream, traditional, uniformitarian science."


Now, it is this fourth item which Wolfe notes i.e. the parallell universe of
non-standard, non-establishment science, which the educated layman is
generally unaware of.  This two volume set, "Cosmology Wars", is intended
to remedy that problem.


Also available in ebook form for $5 (as well as in POD paperback form for
$20 including shipping in the continental United States) on the same page,
is my own little book dealing with gravity and the question of large
dinosaurs.  Gravity, and the little article "Cosmos Without Gravitation"
may be the single thing which Velikovsky caught the most grief over.  It
turns out he was closer to right than his critics were.

Outside the continental United States, download the ebooks.  No way does it
make sense to pay more for shipping than for whatever you're having
shipped.

A sort of a major documentary on some of the subject matter of the book
about gravity was broadcast on prime time throughout Japan last February. 
A few snapshots from the program may be viewed at:

http://www.bearfabrique.org/Catastrophism/sauropods/japanscreens/index.htm